Your Runestone
| Component | vBytes | Cost (USD) |
|---|
Runes vs Ordinals — same byte count, different cost
If your Runestone payload were instead stored as taproot witness data (like an Ordinals inscription), it would get the SegWit discount. Same fee rate and BTC price.
| Storage method | Payload vBytes | Discount |
|---|
Why Runes get no witness discount
A Runestone is a set of varint-encoded integers (rune ID, amounts, output index, and for etchings: name, symbol, divisibility, premine, mint terms) pushed into an OP_RETURN output. OP_RETURN data lives in the transaction's regular scriptPubKey, not in the witness section — so it doesn't qualify for SegWit's witness discount. Every byte costs the full 4 weight units, i.e. exactly 1 vbyte per byte, versus the ~0.25 vbyte per byte that Ordinals inscriptions pay for witness-stored content.
This calculator adds standard transaction overhead — roughly 68 vbytes per taproot input and 43 vbytes per non-OP_RETURN output — plus the OP_RETURN output itself (payload bytes + ~11 bytes of opcode/pushdata/output framing), all multiplied by your fee rate.
Runes payloads are small, so the fee difference rarely matters in dollars
Because a Runestone is typically 20-100 bytes versus an inscription's kilobytes, the 4x per-byte cost disparity translates into a difference of a few cents to a few dollars at normal fee rates — not the difference between a $5 and $500 transaction. The exception is a fee-rate spike (Runes launched during exactly this kind of congestion in April 2024), where every vbyte, discounted or not, gets expensive fast. Check current network fees before minting.
Related: Ordinals inscription cost · Network fees · NFT profit calculator
Frequently asked questions
How is a Runes minting fee calculated?
A Runestone (the mint/etch instruction) is encoded as varint data inside an OP_RETURN output in the scriptPubKey — regular transaction data, not witness data. It gets no SegWit discount: every byte costs the full 4 weight units, i.e. 1 vbyte per byte. Total cost = (OP_RETURN payload bytes + ~11 bytes output overhead + input/output overhead) x fee rate.
Why does minting a Rune cost more per byte than an Ordinals inscription?
Ordinals inscriptions store their content as taproot witness data, which gets a ~75% weight discount (1 vbyte per 4 bytes). Runes deliberately avoid witness data and use OP_RETURN instead, so a Runestone gets zero discount — byte for byte, OP_RETURN data costs 4x more in vbytes than inscription witness data. Runes payloads are tiny (tens of bytes, not kilobytes) so the absolute fee is usually still small, but the per-byte cost is objectively higher.
What's the difference between etching and minting a Rune?
Etching creates a brand-new rune (name, symbol, divisibility, premine, and optional open-mint terms like cap/amount/height) and typically needs a slightly larger Runestone payload. Minting means claiming units of an already-etched rune under its open-mint terms — a much smaller Runestone since it just references an existing rune ID and amount. Both are single Bitcoin transactions; neither requires the commit+reveal two-transaction dance that Ordinals inscriptions need.
Does a Rune mint need a commit and reveal transaction like Ordinals?
No. Runes don't need a commit/reveal pair for a plain mint — the Runestone lives directly in an OP_RETURN output of a single transaction alongside your normal inputs and outputs. Etching a brand-new rune name can optionally use a commitment output first to prevent name-sniping/frontrunning, which does add a second transaction, but a standard open-mint claim is one transaction.
Why did Runes fees spike Bitcoin network fees so much at launch?
Runes launched alongside the April 2024 halving and saw an extreme wave of simultaneous mint transactions competing for block space, which pushed mempool fee rates to record highs — reportedly over 90% of network fees within hours of launch. That was a demand/congestion effect (many people minting at once), not a per-transaction cost increase — the per-byte OP_RETURN mechanics described here stayed the same.